“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” , they ask.
March 15, 2020: The country officially goes into lockdown.
80 people had died of COVID. Within a month, that number would be 30,000. More than 1 million Americans have died, and, as analysis shows, most of them unnecessarily, because of the bungled and too-long-delayed federal government response to the epidemic. We have lost almost as many lives to COVID as we have in all the wars the U.S. has fought.
Businesses began shuttering. Approximately 1.4 million jobs were lost in March, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent. Within a month, another 20 million jobs would be lost, and the unemployment rate was above 14 percent.
Disrupted supply chains created scarcities, including food. Prices rose: beef went up nearly 10 percent; poultry up nearly 6 percent; dairy and eggs up more than 4 percent.
Grocery store shelves were empty. You couldn’t find toilet paper, paper towels, or cleaning supplies.
NYT, March 15th, 2020: “The Coronavirus Swamps Local Health Departments, Already Crippled by Cuts.”
Medical equipment like surgical masks, gloves, gowns (nurses were wearing trash bags), respirators, and face shields were nowhere to be found. FEMA was confiscating supplies, and some states were hiding stockpiles.
Washington Post, March 24th, 2020: “Scramble for medical equipment descends into chaos as U.S. states and hospitals compete for rare supplies”
Freezer trucks were being used for mobile morgues.
The Angry Inch, after disbanding the pandemic response unit in 2018, first scoffed at COVID, saying it would be gone soon, that we should just stop counting deaths, while admitting to the Post’s Bob Woodward, “It’s also more deadly than your – you know, your – even your strenuous flus.”
His son-in-law suggested doing nothing, on the assumption COVID would kill more people in blue states.
Then The Inch suggested injecting disinfectant. Later, he pushed ivermectim, a horse de-wormer. He refused to wear a mask, saying it would make him look “weak,” and the MAGATs followed suit.
Damn right, we’re better off than we were four years ago.
Later,
Scaypgrayce 